The Fruitage of Spiritual Gifts

False Revelations about Antichrist

Another prominent feature of these visions, aside from hell-fire, are revelations concerning the future antichrist, as they call it. We read: FSG 27.5

“They also had visions of the image that in due season this God defying anti-Christ will erect according to prophecy as an object of worship, the image that will be able to speak and to deceive the world. I asked how they knew this handsome man of power was the anti-Christ. They said that a host of demons followed him everywhere, obeyed his every command, advanced at his word, and halted at his order. This anti-Christ was also seen upon a plain as a beast with seven heads. Again I asked how they knew this was the anti-Christ, and the children said the angels told them.... The children were ‘in the Spirit’ in a trance and that, like him, they carried on conversation with the angels and by these heavenly messengers were told the mystery of many things they did not understand themselves. During the reign of this super-man in his God-defying power the saints of God were standing true and bearing faithful testimony in spite of every hardship and. every danger. They saw the two witnesses in Jerusalem, and they saw the saints, as well as these two, endued with mighty super-natural power to fight with and to resist the power of darkness in that awful time, the like of which has never been upon the earth—the time when the devil and all his angels and demons will be turned loose upon the earth, having great wrath, knowing their time is short.”—Ibid., pages 100, 101. FSG 28.1

These people also have visions about the fate of Satan and the resurrection at the second coming of Christ: FSG 28.2

“The children saw the Lord and His angels bind the anti-Christ hand and foot, preparatory to casting him alive into hell. There were visions also of the devil taken alive to the mouth of the pit; a box-like lid was lifted up, and he was cast down into the black well like shaft of the abyss; the lid was shut down, and the Lord locked it with a great key.... Graves burst open as from an explosion. Bodies came out of the graves and were suddenly clothed upon by the heavenly tabernacle of the resurrection glory life. In some cases bones were seen to come together—as the children expressed it in Chinese idiom: ‘one bone from the cast and one from the west.’”—Ibid., pages 110, 111. FSG 28.3

Concerning believers who have died and of their experience in heaven we read: FSG 28.4

“One boy saw a funeral procession where a Christian was being carried to his burial. On the way to the burial ground the trumpet sounded, the Lord descended, the coffin opened, the dead sat up, arose transformed, and ascended into the air. I have already told how our children had visions of some of our Adullam people already dead and now in heaven, clothed in white and enjoying Paradise and of their seeing the saints of old clothed in white. The scripture teaches that between death and the resurrection the saints have spiritual bodies and that the saints are clothed in white before the time of the resurrection. When I cross-questioned the children as to how they knew whether the saints they saw in heaven had been resurrected or not, they said they did not know until the angels told them that they saw only the souls of the saints and that their bodies had not been resurrected.”—Ibid., pages 112, 113. FSG 28.5

Anyone reading even these few short extracts will readily draw his own conclusion. They are utterly out of harmony with the Bible. They not only state things that are not true, but they state things that would give many a contempt for religious things. We believe that no true child of God should accept such teachings as a revelation from the Lord. FSG 29.1

Thus when we look about to study the spiritual gifts in the churches of modern and popular Christianity, we find that they scarcely exist. God has had noble men and great spiritual revivals led by such servants of the Lord as Spurgeon and Moody. We rejoice to know of earnest, devoted children of God here and there, but in our time the Spirit of prophecy is found only with the remnant church, who keep the commandments of God. FSG 29.2

There is a special and most important reason why these facts about the spurious spiritual gifts of today have been presented. The Bible prophecies state that in the very last days Satan will work “with all power and signs and lying wonders.” 2 Thessalonians 2:9. “The spirits of devils, working miracles” will “go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world.” Revelation 16:14. They “that dwell on the earth” will be deceived by these miracles. (Revelation 13:14.) These many manifestations of counterfeit spiritual gifts just now are but a preparation for greater satanic wonders to come. God’s true children must be on their guard and test every pretended gift by the Holy Scriptures. “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20. And as we by testing reject the false on every hand, so we must accept the true and dedicate ourselves anew to God and seek for a larger fullness of the divine graces. FSG 29.3

The very fact, however, that Satan works with deceptive wonders in these days leads us to expect that God too will reveal His power as He did when Israel went out of Egypt. It is of these spiritual manifestations, and especially the gift of prophecy, that the following chapters will tell. It will be helpful also to note the startling contrast between the counterfeit manifestation and the genuine Spirit of prophecy in the remnant church. FSG 30.1

Among the churches and religious circles of our times, both in America and overseas, Seventh-day Adventists occupy a unique place not so much because we observe a different weekly rest day from the other sects, both Roman and Protestant, or because our mission work is found in all the earth, but far more because of the goal of all our activities: to prepare the believers for the second advent—and have prophetic guidance through the Spirit of prophecy in our evangelistic, medical, educational, and revival work around the earth. We hold that the Unseen is not so far from the seen as some fear, and that in this day of doubt, uncertainty, and confused thinking God in heaven is still in direct contact with man on earth. FSG 30.2